Kai Bosworth

Tuesday, March 17 10:10-11:30am BDS and the AAG: Geographers for Justice in Palestine 6:30-9pm Geographers for Justice in Palestine zine launch and gathering register at https://linktr.ee/geog4pal Wednesday, March 18 2:30-3:50pm The Santa Cruz School of Political Economy, Past and Future Thursday, March 19 10:10-11:30am Author Meets Critics: “Spinoza’s Geographical Ethics” by Joe Gerlach 7:30-10pm CAPE Unruly Natures party Friday, March 20 10:10-11:30am Surfaces and Subsurfaces as Spaces of Climate Action 2:30-3:50pm Author Meets Critics: Alyssa Battistoni’s “Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature”

Militant investigation amidst crisis: Conduit cave infrastructures and climate flooding in Bowling Green, Kentucky Kai Bosworth Friday, March 20 – 10:10am In April 2025, western Kentucky recieved over 10 inches of rain over five days, resulting in lingering flooding with some areas of the city inundated by ten feet of water for days afterward. As any political ecologist might suspect, the catastrophic flooding that ensued was no "natural disaster": likely exacerbated by climate change, the flooding was “hydro-geo-social” in origin. Bowling Green’s situation is more complex than many analagous flooding events, as this paper examines the role of city's reliance on a system of underground caves and caverns as its de facto “natural” sewer or wastewater system. As Bowling Green's impermeable surfaces have grown, underfunded city stormwater departments have been forced to rely on thousands of Class V injection wells to drain the city of surface water. However, injection wells have only ever been a temporary fix at most, not least because the conduit power of karst landscapes has finite volume, uncertain connectivity, and quickly transports toxic runoff. In conversation with geologists and cavers, I investigate how new forms of "militant investigation" emerge amidst politically imposed austerity and reactionary climate denial of the US South. I speculatively posit how this form of geoscience might differ from both "citizen science" and "situated knowledges," to more robustly interface not just with an understanding of our vulnerable reliance on subsurface space, but also an understanding of the political-ecological state and the role of state employees in forming relations with caves, karst, and each other.

if you're at AAG next week, come say hi to me at any of these talks and events!

down to a mere three abstracts referencing deleuze at aag this year

hey, is there a umn party this year

"The Geographic Center of the United States" on Google maps, with a marker in Lebanon, KS

"Actual Geographical Center of the United States" on Google maps, with a marker outside Belle Fourche, SD

🤷‍♂️

is it OK that the introduction to my 12 minute AAG talk is 9 minutes long

review of Karsty Hydrology of Mammoth Cave in Progress in Physical Geography -- "it's too bad this book is $50 because tens of thousands of people might read it."

About this book This volume has its roots in the distant past of more than 20 years ago, the International Hydrologic Decade (IHD), 1964-1974. One of the stated goals of the IHD was to promote research into groundwater situations for which the state of knowledge was hopelessly inadequate. One of these problem areas was the hydrology of carbonate terrains.

think i might start off my next book with "one of my goals is to provide research into situations in which the state of knowledge is hopelessly inadequate."

since it's spring break and I'm traveling next week anyway, I'm simply choosing to not observe daylight savings time

a stack of blue book exams to be graded, which (perhaps offensively) include the trademarked phrase "use your imagination."

students: "what are you doing for spring break, Kai?!?"

me:

going to invent a new kind of social scientist who gives all my interlocutors Pynchon character names. this insight from Veronica P. Riverbottoms. a similar situation attested to by Major Rutherford "Leaky" Wellsely. etc.

imagining it with 800 pages is hilarious too

Hellworld cover art has been released

I showed my students the "You wouldn't steal a car" PSA and they said it made file sharing seem extremely cool??!?

it feels like UPE sort of abandoned the concept of 'hinterland' and the kind of (admittedly difficult) scalar work that was so important to e.g. Nature's Metropolis. i know there have been critiques of this "methodological cityism." is my hunch wrong? are there monographs that buck this trend?

doesn't seem to be much media coverage or social awareness of ongoing ICE crackdown in Baltimore?

Enbridge paid police to protect one pipeline. Now it wants to do it again in Wisconsin. The Bad River Band is fighting to stop Line 5 and protect its watershed. Meanwhile, local sheriffs are already tallying the cost of riot gear.

My latest for @grist.org: Pipeline giant Enbridge will pay for police to respond to potential Indigenous-led protests as it begins construction of the controversial Line 5 reroute around the Bad River reservation

grist.org/indigenous/e...

v similar to the way 'anti-authoritarian' sentiment in punk produces so many right wingers. people rebelling against ~any pushback~ as a confirmation of their individual authority against the herd/hive/conformist mentality that would require basic political positions.

wild how few politicians (globally) will condemn this, even out of self-interest. one would think there's at least some lane of popular support they could garner if out of no reason other than differentiation

thought this said David Harvey

have you read the Passions and the Interests? great history to have in the pocket anytime either "objective class interest" or "affect theory" come up

beginning every AAG speaking endeavor with "i acknowledge that everything i'm about to say is completely insufficient to this moment and the horror i wake up with on a daily basis."

after finally going through his earlier movies, I've concluded Radu Jude might be one of the most consistently great filmmakers we've got right now. and seemingly has decent politics to boot.

for some reason, I expected Stoner was gonna be a "life of the mind" book, not a 1930s combo of hating your wife, grade grubbing drama, and academic sex scandal

"The rational is thus naturalized, while nature cloaks itself in nostalgias which supplant rationality" -- lefebvre banger

Lesson number 5 from 'Melt the ICE' organizers:

Intervention Points and Secondary Targets

"...any street corner can become a site of struggle between state forces and the people. Renée Good’s memorial site, Alex Pretti’s memorial site, and the Whipple Federal Building..."

this year I made a pamphlet with "career paths" basically just so we don't have to spend the entire time talking about jobs

(there are def other possible answers like "cops," but we've had two students killed by cars in recent years...)

a parent asked me if the city is safe for students and I was able to quite honestly answer that the thing that makes me most afraid on campus is being hit by a car

America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker Drillers’ injection of wastewater is creating mayhem across the Permian Basin, raising concern about the future of fossil-fuel production there.

Paywalled but the headline gets to the heart of it. They have no where to put the toxic water after blasting it into the ground to try to hide it. Now it's coming back.

www.wsj.com/business/ene...

even the most erudite critics can't resist making a disparaging comment about Pynchon character names